{"id":1277,"date":"2025-07-14T13:58:51","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T17:58:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2025-07-14T13:58:52","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T17:58:52","slug":"review-of-hues-in-harmony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/2025\/07\/14\/review-of-hues-in-harmony\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of “Hues in Harmony”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Eric Denver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bethesda Little Theatre (BLT) certainly pulled out all the colors of the rainbow for their latest show on the first two weekends of June 2025.\u00a0 If you missed seeing\u00a0HUES IN HARMONY: A MUSICAL SPECTRUM, you\u2019re out of luck, but if you were one of many who were in their seats at one of the six presentations, you experienced an award-winning extravaganza. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This special \u201cgem\u201d of a theater has been around as a part of Bethesda\u2019s not-for-profit theater community since 1980. BLT\u2019s mission is to promote the Arts of drama, dance, singing music and speech.  Their mission statement also includes verbiage which touches my heart.  Its purpose is to develop public appreciation for these arts through performance and other activities.  In my opinion, they certainly achieved their objectives with this production. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most important, a spectator reading the Director Laura Holmes\u2019 notes within the playbill, should read her one-pager before seeing the show – – – I haven\u2019t changed a word from the playbill. \u00a0Laura writes “that you are about to explore the emotional language of color – how a single hue can shape a song\u2019s meaning and music can, in turn, color our memories.\u00a0 The show’s 27 numbers are like brushstrokes on a vibrant canvas: the blues of longing, the greens of nostalgia and discovery, the yellows of reflection and breaking free, and the reds of romance and desires.\u00a0 All together they paint a picture of the human experience- layered heartfelt and full of surprises.\u201d \u00a0Laura goes on to detail the wealth of opportunities, in putting together this masterpiece.\u00a0 Her biggest challenge, I presume, as to how to limit it to two acts.\u00a0 She states in the Director\u2019s notes that \u201cshe could have created four acts with the wealth of opportunities she had to choose from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the individual members in the show contained a color starting out with a Rainbow Medley to open the production. \u00a0We then progress through the colors of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet and that was just Act I.\u00a0 Then, Act II continues with \u201cLive in Living Color\u201d (referring of course to the NBC Peacock) and continues with brown, black, gold, white and commences with \u201cOver the Rainbow\u201d from of course the Wizard of Oz!\u00a0 Each of the 27 songs were performed by one, two or even more members of the cast and included choreography, which was added to some of the individual selections.\u00a0 The director incorporated verticality in the production by having the cast perform on different height levels of the stage\u2019s planks.\u00a0 There was a 3-piece band including a multi-purpose keyboard, bass guitar, and drums.\u00a0 To retain the audience\u2019s attention throughout the play, even the cast at times were musically participating through their utilization of their personal playing of the saxophone, guitar, and violin accompanied with appropriate dancing styles including country, pop, jazz, Broadway, and movie music.\u00a0 There was definitely no doze-off time for the audience\u2026there was so much entertainment to appreciate throughout the production. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It should be noted, there were 18 actors in the show.\u00a0 To put any emphasis on any of them individually, as most reviews might do, could not be accomplished.\u00a0 Together the cast was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. \u00a0With the director\u2019s help, they provided a memorable experience. \u00a0The order of the show\u2019s songs were selected by both the Director and Music Director (Francine Krasowska).\u00a0 The music was selected across the bandwidth from the 1920’s Bye-Bye Blackbird, moving through the years to a song by Barbara Streisand from \u201cMy Coloring Book.\u201d\u00a0 Traveling through the Hues in Harmony, the audience may have imagined that they were walking down the yellow brick road during the entire two-act performance.\u00a0 To encapsulate this entire review, I quote a sentence from the Director\u2019s notes\u2026”COLOR is a power which directly influences the soul.\u00a0 I believe this show taps into that power\u2026not only with sound and shade, but with laughter, storytelling, movement and heart!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you unfortunately missed the opportunity to experience this performance piece of art, maybe you can convince the Kennedy Center to produce it for at least a month! No doubt, it will be impossible to get tickets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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by Eric Denver Bethesda Little Theatre (BLT) certainly pulled out all the colors of the rainbow for their latest show on the first two weekends of June 2025.\u00a0 If you missed seeing\u00a0HUES IN HARMONY: A MUSICAL SPECTRUM, you\u2019re out of luck, but if you were one of many who were in their seats at one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1284,"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions\/1284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blt-online.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}